The Goddess of Atvatabar: The Sun Beneath the Sea

The sun set at eight in the morning. Aboard the Polar King, men checked the time, then looked up again. The sky was not where they had left it.

They had sailed north to find the pole. Now the North Star had shifted, and the sea curved toward a horizon no chart could explain.

Ahead lay more water. Around it rose an immense rim, too wide to be an island. The ship seemed to be approaching the edge of a bowl.

Some sailors wanted to turn back. Commander White called them together. They would have to decide whether to continue into the unknown.

He spoke of discovery. They cheered. Later, he would admit that some may have feared seeming cowardly more than they feared the sea.

The Polar King sailed on. Familiar bearings fell away. The men watched the water for the drop they expected beneath their keel.

There was no sudden plunge. The ship kept floating. What changed was the world around it.

A wave lifted the ship. A flash appeared ahead, then vanished into the trough. At the next crest, the sailors climbed the rigging to look.

The light rose into view: another sun, shining inside the Earth. Around it lay oceans and continents curving upward into the impossible distance.

They had not fallen off the world. They had sailed into it. White’s charts described the outside of a place they were now seeing from within.

The sailors crowded the rigging. Some shouted. White watched a world appear where his maps had ended. The same sea still carried their ship.

They had not reached the end of the sea. They had reached the end of what they knew about it. The Polar King kept sailing.